Clicking Adsense Ads

Knowing that the owner of the site gets paid for every click, I try to at least pay attention to the ads and check for links that interest me.

Typically though, I don’t always look really hard for ads, so they should definitely position where I should see them during my normal site navigation.

Size of the ad doesn’t matter.

Good topic Garry!

If the ad interests me I will click on it, that is if I see the advertisement in the first place, hence find the top of the page best.
Why do I click in the fist place? To give something back to the web/blog owner for what is received; good information!
‘In the face’ ads tend to make me want to move on quickly, without the click!

Garry as an artist I am a very visual person that likes layouts that I can get the information that I want straight away so that I can move onto the next. I don’t particularly want to single out blogs or websites because the sites that come to mind are ones that I also like to keep tabs on and do respect their work.

Let’s see if I can expand on what I said in my first comment. “In the face” would be when colours are tasteless, ads oversized and busy images used. I am not fond of very large fonts or moving images either. Not all visitors are on high speed internet with many still on dial-u. I don’t have a choice with internet speed, ISDN dial-up is it for me and can be pretty darn slow at times. The video ads for example would never be clicked on by myself. The long towers are a waste of space when placed near the top of a page in the sidebar. I want to see information like ‘recent posts’ and so forth, not the advertisement, as ads will always be secondary to me. The banner and smaller square with text ads are my preference when visiting a page because I feel these are a much better design to get the information to the visitors without overpowering the remainder of the page, if colours are used correctly

I tend not to click on any ads for various reasons. When it comes to my own blog, I try to market my content toward the click happy masses rather than a web savvy individual who tend to visit “How-To-Make-Money” blogs.

Very interesting topic Garry.

You would normally surf the sites that you have interests. You are looking for some info, then the ads next to it might have what you need. So, there goes a click.

However, if the sites is full of ads and does not have any value added, there is no point of helping the owner. In this case, I just type in the URL manually. If there is no URL, forget it.

In summary (reason for clicking):
1) The ads is catchy and interesting
2) It is highly targeted (and might you want you want)
3) Help the owner of the websites for giving good info.

I don’t click ads when i’m on mu PC, a habit brought over i practice as someone who don’t click ads on their site

if i’m on another pc terminal, i click once in a while to help the fella earn and also if the ads are interesting

782×90 & 336×280 works best for my roving eye

also dude, work on ur spam comment redirect page. after i key in the K2 image captcha, it says my comments is successful and thats it.

no link to your main page, i think you lose couple of readers who are internet idiots

just a thought …

btw i use akismet, no captcha, kinda hassle free. also K2 spam plugins clash with another plugin of mine, had to deactivate it

cheers

I think I would fall into the majority here.. I click on ads to support the quality content the author brings when the ads display relevant interesting links.

Text ads are the ones I click usually. My eyes just don’t pay attention to to the banner ads and flash ads and tend to ignore them. I second or thrid the opinion that ads in the sidebar take up valuable space and somewhere in the side of the post or the bottom is what I consider a favorable place. I don’t run any ads yet so my views are as a techie reader.

I think I still belong to the “click happy masses.” I am even tempted to click on my own ads NOT to make money but because I am curious about their content. I’m a sucker about ads on how to make money online. Also ads offering free stuff I’m interested in like stories and book reviews. It doesn’t matter where they are on the page as long as I see them. It’s more of the way the ads are written that determines whether I find them credible or not to merit exploration.

Knowing all these myself, I put up blogs to carry ads that I think would be attractive to people like me. One of my problems is that I often don’t like the kind of ads being displayed on my site.

I rarely click on ads, but when I do it’s because the ad REALLY interests me.

I am slightly more partial to clicking on ads on sites that I feel really give me great information. However, I still only click on ads for sites that look really interesting to me.

I don’t think the size of the ad affects me much. Ads that are located above the fold, are more likely to grab my attention. Since ads located in the middle of content annoy me, I never click on those. But ads just above or below content, in the sidebars, or at top of the site are fair game.

Hope that helps…

my google earnings have just dropped to the bottom for april and may. I used to make 10$/day with 7000 to 8000 impressions, but now I make only 5$/day.

that’s as some say due to the good weather, but I think it is due to people being lazy to click. also the ads are not really targetted that well. I get wu-long slim tea ads on my articles about trance music? what the hell?

no wonder noone clicks them. the competition filter is already maxed at 200 lines.

some ads, I think are very interesting, I am tended to click, then again others are just plain stupid.
so I can basically understand both sides of the coin.

does anyone click your ads garry?

i changed the header as i got THE email from goggle whom with its new TOS, asking me such blending is prohibited and i’m in violation or i’ll get my account suspended

Being that I am and advertiser I know the cost of running ad campaigns and they are not cheap. I rarley click on Adsense for this reason. If there is and ad that I see that interests me I usally copy and paste the url directly as not to cost the advertiser un-due cost as I have no intentions of buying.

Adsense has change alot since it’s beginnings. Too many ill willed people are abusing the advertising system these days.

As for the novice that knows nothing about ads, like my parents, your chances of landing a sale are much better than the random “tip in the jar” approach that seems to be whats happening latley. The “tip” is costing me money and I see nothing in return.

Although I do not implement Adsense on my best performing site as of yet I do plan to once the traffic is more relevant. I hope as time goes on people that are click happy realize the money they are costing advertiser, especially the small operations. Many people simple go broke because of the click happy folks having a good time.

Great topic Gary

Greg,

I do that too at times. I used to spend quite a bit of money on advertising on Google. Generally, I turned off content sites, so my ads were only seen in the search results. Sometimes I would also show them on content sites, but I would always set up a separate campaign and bid a lower price on the content ads.

When I visit sites, I often try to click an advertisement or two to help that blogger out. I think its a good practice for readers of a blog they like.

Ad placement is just something to experiment with. With your suggestions and my old experience, I’ve been moving my ads around quite a bit to figure out what works. I’m generally a person that likes to try different things, so knowing me, I’ll move them even if I find a position that works well

Great reader feedback and discussions above!

You asked me:
‘How would you rate the overall level of quality in the content that you find through Google Adsense being generated on the sites you visit on a regular basis?’

Typically, I think that the targeted ads in adsense works very good. However, as some users have pointed out, there is always that weird one that on the surface doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the site.

As far as the content of links provided by adsense, it varies. I would have to say that I have seen a lot of sites that are clearly SEO optimized. They are rich in content but aren’t really appearing to the eye. However, I have also seen pages that are very appealing to the eye, and I have actually favorite’d and gone back to some sites I found via adsense ads.

Okay this might be long, might not as I see you comment after others and normally with a question. First, I click on one a week, sometimes more depending. I’m afraid if I click on one or more than one a day, they’ll get banned. But I do want to support them so I click at least one a week. The ones I click are normally ones that I would at least find interesting. ie, I see some of yours are about blogging or getting paid to blog, that would definitely be a click, however if it were about software or computers it probably wouldn’t. A parenting site will get me to click on ads about children’s products, diapers, etc. (things that interest me)

As for how do I rate the ads, lately all it is are those darn ebooks for making millions of dollars. Or helium of course and I’m already a member there.

I tend to actually click on the text link ads inside a paragraph that I’m reading to see where it takes me. Normally I avoid those giant ones that have the one picture on them. Well not sure if this helped or it was what you are looking for.

One other thing… I was talking to my wife about this the other day and for some reason the banner ads with movement and nice graphics tend to draw my attention. I click on them sometimes, because the ad catches my eye. Whereas with her, the banner ads with moving graphics annoy her and she never clicks on them. I don’t know if this is a male vs. female thing or something else. Just thought it would interest you.

I personally love ads if they are still, medium size images. Nice , creative, relevant images. Moving graphics are too much and a bit threatening. As for text ads – I just ignore them. They tend to be in smaller fonts and not 100% relevant ( in case of Google ads).

Position comes secondary. Right side has more chances to be clicked (intentionally or by mistake)

All these days I didn’t care much about them ads. I used sites that advertise were not worthy to check and only geared to for SEO and traffic generation without much value addition. I have seldom looked at them or clicked them. But now that I use ads in my blog I take them more seriously and look at them to see whether they are similar etc. to the ones I get on my blog. So when I read them many interest me and I like to click them and read more. But then again this may be a short term interest, i don’t know.

btw Garry, Thank you very much for the information and tips you share with us. I am learning many things from them.

I just put the ads in my blog. I’ll never want to click my own ads, just try looking and change for optimized the ads. Than you for the information and tips.